Animation: The best animation compilation ever from Late Night Work Club

Normally when I get really excited about things my ability to speak eloquently goes out the window, my verbal communication reduced to a short series of expletives. Sadly, writing for a website means that I have to curb that tendency and find other ways of getting my excitement across. SOMETIMES BY BEING REALLY SHOUTY and sometimes by trying to fit as many words into a really long but snappy, slightly confusing but communicative nevertheless sentence that wordily expresses that I’ve crossed over the threshold to a whole new level of frantic hysteria.

In the case of Late Night Work Club’s debut animation however, I’m going to just stick with what comes naturally; shit the bed, this is great stuff!

Ghost Stories features the work of eleven brilliant animators, all telling their own unique stories that they’ve written, directed and animated themselves in between freelance animation gigs and their day jobs. The films were made between September 2012 and August 2013. For a little evening side project it’s a staggeringly good watch and makes a brilliant case for working under your own steam. Unconstrained by the whims of their clients each animator has had the opportunity to let their imaginations run riot, and the results speak for themselves. Massive congratulations to Dave Prosser, Charles Huettner, Sean Buckelew, Jake Armstrong and Erin Kilkenny, Caleb Wood, Louise Bagnall, Alex Grigg, Conor Finnegan, Ciaran Duffy, Eamonn O’Neill and Scott Benson, you guys deserve some kind of award!

Chances are if you’ve ever been a teenager, had a passing interest in indie and/or punk and have had even the most fleeting dealings with the creative industries you’ve owned a pair of Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars. Well, exciting news is a-foot (see what we did there?), as the brand is about to launch the Chucks’ sassy new little brother, the Chuck II. We’re still not sure what they’ll be like yet, but in the run-up to their grand un-boxing the brand has commissioned a series of artists to create artworks based around the idea underpinning the new shoe, “obsession.”

If you don’t already know of Jack Sachs’ name, now is the time to sit up and take note. The London-based illustrator, animator and brain behind that beautiful animation of a workshop that took us all by storm last year was picked out as one of our ones to watch a few months back, and he has since racked up a series of commissions that put his 3D renders and animation skills to the test. Between drawing up some unmissable feature pages for the SS15 issue of POP magazine, and beginning a new and ongoing project for NTS Radio which includes some psychedelic, hyperactive visuals to satisfy even the shortest of attention spans, he’s also whipped up CGI design for the most recent episode of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, and made a clothing design for a collection by Lazy Oaf. What did we tell you, eh?

Sometimes the most disturbing, troubling but important things are best delivered with dark humour and a large dose of the unexpected. Such is the case in this powerful animation from Veterans for Peace, which sends up an advert for Action Man figures to drive home their campaign to end child recruitment into the British Armed Forces and raise the age people can join from 16 to 18.

In one of the more surreal email missives I have received, Sarah Simi informed me of her equally surreal labour of love: an entirely hand-knitted stop motion animation set in a charming little town called Woolly Bush. All of its quaint inhabitants are totally starkers, save the odd pearly king hat, vicar’s collar or socks and sandals combo. Named Nudinits and animated by Ed Hartwell, the detail is extraordinary: from tiny bubbles on beer and a little cat poop to some woolled-up bible passages, nothing has been missed.

Tennis season is definitely in full swing now with the first game of Wimbledon kicking off (or whatever the tennis equivalent is) today. What better way to usher in the quintessentially British tournament than with some animation from our favourites Animade. Originally created for last month’s 2015 French Open as part of IBM’s interactive campaign for the tournament, eight animations and illustrations were displayed via large-scale advertisements around Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport and the Roland-Garros tennis stadium.

When an animation manages to clock up more than 20 international film awards and an Oscar shortlist nomination you can be fairly sure it’s going to warrant taking nine minutes out of your busy morning – nine minutes you might have spent making coffee, or smoking, or chatting to a babe in HR – to watch. Coda is a short film by Dublin-based animation studio And Maps And Plans, which follows one lost soul’s drunken stumble home from a nightclub in the early hours of the morning. What starts as a warmly depicted story about drunk antics quickly transforms into a quiet reflection on life and mortality that will stick with you all day. At the risk of ruining the surprise I’ll stop there, but if you have them to spare, this might be the most wisely spent nine minutes you use all day.